The Open Eligibility Project

The Open Eligibility Project is a collaborative for a series of standards for the human services sector. The Open Eligibility taxonomy is a simple way to categorize human services and human situations. With these common categories, we, as service providers, navigators, and people in need, can find human services quickly and easily.

Taxonomy

The Open Eligibility taxonomy consists of two important concepts: Human Services and Human Situations. Human Services are services offered by government or charitable organizations, and include things such as housing, food pantries or counseling services.

Human Situations are ways of describing attributes of a person that could help them find programs they are looking for, including examples like: veterans, physical disability or seniors.

Animal Welfare — Services for pet food and supplies, companion animals, shelters and rescue, and help paying for pet care.

Anger Management — Services to assist individuals with anger issues.

Assisted Living — Residential facility typically providing a room, meals, housekeeping and laundry service. Depending on the needs of the resident they may also provide assistance with daily activities such as personal hygiene, dressing, eating and walking.

Assistive Technology — Services, equipment and supplies to help perform everyday living and employment tasks.

Home Fuels — Services providing home fuels such as firewood or propane.

Home Goods — Services providing new or used furniture items and other household supplies.

Home Visiting — Visits to homebound, hospitalized or other socially isolated individuals due to disability, old age, or lack of companionship to maintain contact with others to just talk, read, listen etc.

Homebuyer Education — Services providing assistance to first time home buyers.

Hospice — Services providing healthcare and emotional support to terminally ill patients and their caregivers.

Hospital Treatment — Treatment within a hospital.

Housing — Services for emergency, short-term and long-term housing, housing advice, help finding housing, and help paying for housing.

Housing Advice — Services that can help guide individuals and families through issues related to housing.

Housing Vouchers — Coupons to help pay for housing.

Identification Recovery — Services to help pay for and retrieve birth certificates, social security numbers, and other forms of identification.

Work — Services for finding and sustaining work and improving job skills and abilities.

Workplace Rights — Services that help protect your legal rights in the workplace.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a taxonomy?

TAXONOMY is a fancy word for ‘classification’ or ‘group’. For most of us, the only time we even hear the word ‘taxonomy’ is in our middle school science class on classifying biological organisms. Remember? Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. We learn that human beings are primates; the same order as chimpanzees. Well anyway, it’s less important you remember that and more important to note that grouping similar items together and then giving those similar items a name is the idea behind ‘taxonomy’.

Why was the taxonomy created?

Our vision is to make human service information accessible. In order to do that we must first have a consistent way of classifying these services.

Did you know there is taxonomy for human services published by 211 LA County?

Yes, we know it exists. However, we’re taking a different approach that is free, openly available and simple.

How was the taxonomy created?

First we analyzed the social service programs we wanted to classify. We grouped similar services together in a way that made sense to us and gave those groups names. Then we tested how well that worked. Then we did that again. And again. And again.

What do I need to know to understand it?

Nothing! Well, English might be helpful but other than that you’re good to go! Aunt Bertha spent a long time testing different service names to make sure we were communicating exactly what we meant and you would intuitively understand.

Where does the taxonomy come into play on the Aunt Bertha website?

Think about it like this. Every provider administers at least one program. Every program provides at least one client-facing service. And every service is represented with a service tag. Our taxonomy is a categorization of those service tags.

How can I get involved?

The most helpful thing you can do is tell us what you think. You can leave a comment at the bottom of any page or drop us a line at taxonomy@auntbertha.com.